Victorian Home Remedies
For background, the foundations of modern medicine in England were being established during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although the foundations of modern medicine were being established, there were also many crucial of shifts relating to the ways in which medicine was practiced during this time as well. Medicine before the nineteenth century turned out to be more charity-based (Brown). Medical dispensaries, like Aldersgate Street Dispensary, (which were the equivalent of medical offices today) were established in the eighteenth century. These dispensaries were opened and endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians. Due to the rise of poverty within England during the eighteenth century, specifically in London, these dispensaries began to fill the unmet need of crucial and vital outpatient care for the poor from the overcrowded hospitals (Hartston). With the decline in proper medical care, especially for the poor and vulnerable, an emerging theme that was coming forth concurrently during period in time was the rise in popularity of alternative medicine. To explain this rise further, we will use a popular form of alternative medicine at this time, hydropathy, as an example and case study.
Hydropathy was a form of alternative medicine that came from "Vincent Priessnitz’s discovery of the healing benefits of pure water and his establishment of Gräfenberg in the Silesian Alps in the mid-1820s as the first and most famous hydropathic center" (Marland and Adams, 500). Further, Priessnitz called his discovery the "negation of orthodox therapy; it was intended to make medicine redundant" (Bradley). Not too long after Priessntiz's discovery, hydropathic treatment centers were started throughout Britain. Despite the rise in these treatment centers, Marland and Adams argue in their article that the domestic practices of hydropathy heavily impacted its popularity in the mid-nineteenth century.
With this, domestic practices of these different forms of alternative medicine at this time, like hydropathy, led to their respective rises in popularity during the nineteenth century. Arguably, the inclusion of "A cure for a cough", as well as other recipes such as "A Cure for Rheumatism", which included epsom salt, can speak to the use of alternative medicines and home remedies within the domestic spheres in Victorian England during the nineteenth-century; maybe this was also a reaction to the decline in quality medical care within Britain, with the poor being hardest hit. Further, this may give us a glimpse into figuring out what social class of the anonymous women fell into given the inclusion of these home remedies within this manuscript recipe book."Domestic guides, while validating home treatment, were also likely to publicize the benefits to be gained from attendance at water cure centers" (Marland and Adams 514).
Along with hydropathy, there other forms of alternative medicine that we, from a modern-day perspective, may not fully understand or find a bit strange. Opium eating was one of them. In "Cure for a cough," one of the ingredients was in fact laudanum, an opiate that was widely used during this time period and is found in painkillers today. Of course today, we, as a society, are far more cautious about use of addictive drugs, but this was not the case for Victorian England. Most of the opium in the England during the early nineteenth century came from Turkey, accounting for about 80% - 90% of the total imports of the drug into England; Turkish opium had been noted for its strength and high quality (Berridge). Later, Opium usage began to be associated with China (Ng). Further, there were no restrictions on who could legally buy and sell opium in England until 1868. This led to many tragic deaths, like the instance of an infant dying of an overdose of laudanum due to the fact that the infant was mistakenly given syrup of laudanum instead of syrup of rhubarb; the bottles of both the syrup of rhubarb and laudanum were very similar, which ended up being the cause of this unfortunately fatal mistake (Berridge). This example pointed to the larger public health concern of the dangerous nature of such casual, unrestricted, opium use. In her article, "Victorian Opium Eating: Responses to Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century England," Berridge states:
Both the recipes for "Cure for a cough" and "To Make Black Medicine," located within this manuscript recipe book, have given us a glimpse into the medicinal world within Victorian England during the nineteenth century, especially highlighting the ways the domestic sphere was heavily involved in different forms of alternative medicine that were happening outside of established medical spaces. It also points to how for a woman, managing a household was far more than cooking and baking, including domestic medicine and crafting."the first series of figures on opium beginning in the early 1860s showed the full extent of the situation: 126 deaths from opiates in 1863, for instance, out of a total of 403 poisoning fatalities, with 80 deaths in that year and 95 in 1864 from laudanum and syrup of poppies alone. Around a third of all poisoning deaths in the decade were the result of the administration of opiates, and the relatively high accidental, rather than suicidal, death rate from opiates bore witness to the drug's easy availability" (443).